Jouissance (6 of 7) : Enjoyment of hate

Enjoyment can represent a type of stasis, an impediment to change, certainly so in the clinical situation, where we precisely enjoy our symptoms and don’t really wish to give them up. We ask about jouissance - the gratification of suffering - in Freud’s controversial Dora case. There is a type of double-bonding of jouissance, where we give way to the temptation to enjoy (and are thereby often bonded to others enjoying in the same way) and then experience guilt afterwards, which is precisely the effect of the superego enjoying. We think about Lacan’s idea of the superego as both that which represents the law and the breaking of the law, and give examples of those activities where the id and the superego can - unexpectedly - both to be gratified in the same act. Link to board: